Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Cool things you find on your birthday:

You find that one of your former history prof's bugbears is a Catholic saint.

I don't think my old Roman history professor liked Irenaeus much. She seemed to go along with Elaine Pagels' excoriation of this bishop who fought to maintain proper Christian identity and teaching. Not only did he argue against the Gnostics, he also helped to ensure that Jewish scripture was integrated into The Bible. Irenaeus is one of the reasons we have an Old Testament and a New Testament. Further information on St. Irenaeus can be found here and here.

Irenaeus did the jobs of Bishop, historian, fact-checker, and Father of the Church. He's sort of an early blogger in a way. My kind of guy!